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Visualizing America’s Changing Energy Mix (1970 – 2030e)

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Visualizing America's Changing Energy Mix

Visualizing America’s Changing Energy Mix

What powers the U.S., and how that mix is evolving over time.

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

Today’s chart plots data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to show America’s changing energy mix, along with their projected mix for 2030.

It shows the total amount of energy used each year, along with energy use per capita. It then breaks down each year’s energy supply by source, which provides another way for us to visualize the decline of coal use, the resurgence in natural gas, and the rise of renewable energy.

Energy use per capita is measured in “gallons of gasoline equivalent per day”, which we thought was easy to relate to. (For our metric friends, a U.S. gallon is just less than four litres.)

Here’s the data:

YearEnergy used (Quadrillion BTUs)U.S. Population (millions)Gallons of gas eq. (per day)
197067.8209.57.1
198576.4240.77.0
200098.8282.97.7
201597.3321.86.6
2030e98.7355.86.1

Here’s energy supply by source from 1970-2030. Projected data from 2030 is from the EIA as well.

YearCoalGasPetroleumNuclearHydroSolarWindOther
197018.1%32.1%43.5%0.4%3.9%0.0%0.0%2.0%
198522.9%23.2%40.5%5.3%3.9%0.0%0.0%4.2%
200022.8%24.1%38.7%8.0%2.8%0.1%0.1%3.4%
201516.0%29.0%36.6%8.6%2.4%0.4%1.8%5.3%
2030e11.7%30.8%36.3%8.1%3.0%1.1%4.7%4.3%

Interestingly, solar and wind only make up about 2% of energy today according to the EIA, and they are projected to combine for 6% by 2030.

Various organizations have criticized these numbers, suggesting that the EIA is not properly accounting for green energy in America – and that it actually supplies a much bigger part of the energy mix.

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Energy

How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the U.S.

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Voronoi graphic visualizing U.S. reliance on Russian uranium

How Much Does the U.S. Depend on Russian Uranium?

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a ban on imports of Russian uranium. The bill must pass the Senate before becoming law.

In this graphic, we visualize how much the U.S. relies on Russian uranium, based on data from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA).

U.S. Suppliers of Enriched Uranium

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported.

Currently, Russia is the largest foreign supplier of nuclear power fuel to the United States. In 2022, Russia supplied almost a quarter of the enriched uranium used to fuel America’s fleet of more than 90 commercial reactors.

Country of enrichment serviceSWU%
🇺🇸 United States3,87627.34%
🇷🇺 Russia3,40924.04%
🇩🇪 Germany1,76312.40%
🇬🇧 United Kingdom1,59311.23%
🇳🇱 Netherlands1,3039.20%
Other2,23215.79%
Total14,176100%

SWU stands for “Separative Work Unit” in the uranium industry. It is a measure of the amount of work required to separate isotopes of uranium during the enrichment process. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Most of the remaining uranium is imported from European countries, while another portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States called Urenco.

Similarly, nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half of their enriched uranium—and many of them are NATO-allied members and allies of Ukraine.

In 2023 alone, the U.S. nuclear industry paid over $800 million to Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation, Rosatom, and its fuel subsidiaries.

It is important to note that 19% of electricity in the U.S. is powered by nuclear plants.

The dependency on Russian fuels dates back to the 1990s when the United States turned away from its own enrichment capabilities in favor of using down-blended stocks of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium.

As part of the new uranium-ban bill, the Biden administration plans to allocate $2.2 billion for the expansion of uranium enrichment facilities in the United States.

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